White Feathers (35 page)

He was a little worried because it didn’t look any where near finished yet, not in his eyes at least. Many of the walls — those that were to be papered rather than painted — were so far only covered with a layer of scrim, and much of the woodwork was still to be oiled or varnished. But Erin seemed absolutely thrilled; she smiled delightedly as he showed her through the bedrooms, the largest of them with a set of glazed doors opening out onto a planned private garden area; she nodded appreciatively when he took her through the kitchen and pointed out the new ‘wetback’ stove with plenty of cooking surface and a spacious oven for roasts and loaves of bread; and she admired the bathroom with its deep bath and the adjacent indoor toilet.

But the carved mantelpiece in the living room took her breath away. ‘Oh, I love it, it’s absolutely
beautiful
.’ She turned to him and said excitedly, ‘It makes this house, well,
ours
— a union of who you are and who I am. It’s perfect.’

‘It’s a wedding present from my father, so it’s fortunate you’ve agreed to marry me, otherwise it would just be me sitting here looking at it.’

‘No, that will never happen,’ she said, taking his hands. ‘I want this house to be a
home
, Joseph, for your people as well as mine. It’s important, for our children as well as for us. I want everyone who comes here to feel welcome.’

Joseph kissed her again. ‘I know, and they will. It’s part of the reason I wanted us to have our own house. I know my Maungakakari family will always be welcome at Kenmore but, well, I think they’d probably be more at ease in a house that isn’t quite so grand. Papa will be fine of course — he’s used to flitting in and out of both worlds — but perhaps not some of the others.’

‘Do you think it really would bother them?’

‘No, probably not but, well, not everybody at Kenmore is as open-minded as my mother.’

There was a short silence as they contemplated the likely reaction of Mrs Heath and Jeannie and Lucy to great gatherings of Joseph’s relatives camping out in the Kenmore parlour on special occasions.

‘No,’ Erin agreed eventually, ‘you’re probably right. Any way, we should have a home of our own. I much prefer the idea of just you and I together.’ She looked up at him with an expression of pure happiness. ‘At least until the children come, any way.’

Everyone was in the parlour talking at once about plans for the wedding. At least, the women were — the men seemed content to sit and watch. Duncan was cantering about the room on an imaginary horse with a lace doily draped over his head, chanting loudly, ‘Here comes the bride, fair, fat and
wide
.’

Lucy said, ‘Duncan, that’s not very nice. Aunty Erin isn’t fat, wide or fair.’

‘No but she’s a bride, and that’s what you sing for a bride,’ he replied knowledgably.

‘Oh aye,’ said Andrew, ‘and how many brides have you met?’

Duncan ignored him and cantered out into the hall, followed immediately by Liam on his own invisible mount.

Tamar eyed the loose waistband on Erin’s skirt and observed, ‘Actually, you’ve lost a lot of weight. Was the food not very good at the hospitals?’

‘Oh, no, it was fine,’ Erin replied, blushing slightly as everyone looked at her. ‘We all ate like pigs but with all the running around I suppose we never had a chance to get fat.’

She had lost weight, and she knew it. Her hip bones stuck out now, and had for some time; she suspected she appeared thin and tired. She looked better than Keely, though. She thought her cousin looked awful, agitated and somehow defeated at the same time. Erin thought they’d all changed, to a greater or lesser degree. Both of her parents looked older, especially her mother, whose hair was starting to go quite grey. Andrew was looking positively grizzled and the lines on Tamar’s face were more noticeable than they had been three years ago. Lucy looked tired too, and poor James seemed a shadow of himself; Tamar had hinted that he still wasn’t quite right. Erin wasn’t surprised that he looked older, and somehow harder: his expression of wary and slightly uneasy repose was very familiar.

The only one who really hadn’t changed much was Joseph, although perhaps she couldn’t see it because she’d carried such a bright and burning image of him in her mind while they’d been apart. His dark hair had grown long again and he’d clearly regained the physical condition he’d lost after he’d been wounded. In fact he looked rudely strong and healthy, and she’d been delighted to see him walking on his artificial leg with a limp that was only barely noticeable. He really was such a marvellous man and she was so proud to be the one he wanted. As if he’d heard her thoughts, he looked over at her and smiled.

Jeannie, watching her daughter, smiled too. ‘Well, I’m sure
Mrs Heath will do something about getting the meat back on your bones, dear. You know how she likes to force-feed people if she thinks they’re under the weather.’

‘Oh Mum, you make me sound like a sick ewe. I’m fine, really I am. I was too heavy when we went over seas any way — on the ship some of the girls were calling me Onion instead of Erin because of the shape of my backside,’ Erin said, and grinned.

James, Andrew and Lachie laughed immoderately.

‘Really? How rude,’ said Tamar, although she couldn’t completely suppress her own smile.

‘I hope you took no notice,’ Jeannie said, feeling insulted on her daughter’s behalf. ‘They were probably jealous.’

Joseph came over, perched on the arm of Erin’s chair and gazed adoringly down at her. ‘And were they jealous of your beautiful face too? And your lovely blackbird hair and your extraordinary compassion and your wonderful personality?’

Keely made a gagging noise. Joseph looked over at her. ‘What?’

‘You two,’ she responded impatiently. ‘Do you have to be all over each other all the time? It’s sick-making.’

There was an embarrassed silence, then with a barely stifled sob Keely lurched to her feet and rushed out of the parlour.

‘Oh dear,’ said Tamar, and got up to follow her.

Erin reached out and touched Tamar’s arm. ‘No Aunty Tam, I’ll go. I think Keely and I need to have a talk.’

She went upstairs and knocked discreetly on her cousin’s door.

‘Go away!’

‘Keely, it’s me. I want to come in.’

Silence, then the door opened to reveal Keely’s tear-splotched face. She stood back to let Erin in, then flopped heavily onto her bed.

Erin settled at Keely’s feet and asked gently, ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

Keely rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, her tears soaking the thin cotton pillowslip.

‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted, her voice muffled. ‘You must think me the most ungracious cow. It’s not sour grapes, really it isn’t, I really am very happy for you both. I think it’s lovely you’re getting married so quickly and I would too, if it were me. It’s just that, well, it’s been months now and I haven’t even had, well, I thought …’ She burst into a renewed fit of sobbing.

Erin patted Keely’s leg. ‘But you know what a rotter he was, surely?’

Keely rolled back over and sat up. ‘Yes, I
know
that,’ she snapped, wiping her running nose inelegantly on the back of her hand. ‘I know that, but I thought he might at least have got in touch.’

Erin didn’t think this was the time to tell Keely he’d probably been too busy with his new girlfriend to do anything of the sort.

Instead she said, ‘I can’t say I know how you feel because I don’t, but I can see how much it’s hurting you.’ She took her cousin’s hand. ‘But Keely, was he really worth it? All this pain?’

‘Yes, he was. And I hate him for it.’

‘Have you talked to your mother about how you feel?’

Keely nodded. ‘Sort of. She’s been quite understanding, really.’ She reached into the top drawer of her nightstand, withdrew a neatly folded and ironed handkerchief and blew her nose honkingly. ‘According to her, though, I’m grieving for what I thought I had, not what I really had.’

‘And is she right?’

Keely shrugged. ‘I can’t see how she can be. How would she know about something like that? She and Da have always been so happy together.’

‘Well, yes, they have, but what about her first husband? Obviously that wasn’t an ideal partnership, otherwise Joseph wouldn’t have come along, would he?’

‘I suppose,’ Keely agreed grudgingly. ‘But she still can’t know what it was like for me with Ross.’

‘No, she can’t, but she might be able to help you put the whole thing behind you. It’s about time, Keely. After all, it’s been nearly a year now.’

‘Oh,’ said Keely acidly, ‘I hadn’t realised there was a time after which a person’s broken heart should suddenly be mended.’

Erin took a deep, measured breath. ‘Being sarcastic won’t help anyone.’

Keely’s shoulders suddenly slumped dejectedly. ‘I know, I’m sorry.’

She blew her nose again then took a few deep breaths herself before looking Erin directly in the eye.

‘The thing is, I really don’t know
what’s
wrong with me. For a long time it
was
Ross, and the embarrassment of being sent home and all that, but I think I’ve come to terms with that now — well, with the fact that I’ll never be with him. As you’ve said at least a hundred times, I’d have to be deaf and blind not to realise what a swine he was. No, it’s more than that. I just can’t seem to
settle
. I know I said when we were at Brockenhurst that I was finding it hard to look after sick soldiers day in and day out, and I was. It was really depressing me there for a while. And then Ross came along and it all seemed so much more bearable. I had something to look forward to every day then, and when one of the patients died, the fact that I had someone to talk to, someone who wanted to spend time just with me, made me feel not quite so useless. I always felt so insignificant whenever we lost one of the men. Oh, I know we all did the best we could, and looking back I’m amazed that we didn’t lose more, but I just felt it was always ultimately hopeless.’ She stared down at her hands, clenched together in her lap. ‘They just kept on coming and coming, didn’t they? Day in and day out, no legs, arms missing, paralysed, blind, hurt and crying and
frightened. And I couldn’t deal with it, in the end. And then when I came home, I found I really missed it all and I realised that I, we,
all
of us who were there, really had been making a difference.’ She laughed, and it came out as a sob. ‘That’s funny, isn’t it? I wasn’t any good at it, but I really missed it when it was gone. And now my life feels empty and pointless and unbelievably boring and no matter how hard I try all I seem to be able to do is grump and snap and irritate people. Some days,
most
days, I dread getting out of bed because I just can’t see the point.’

Erin sighed. ‘Oh Keely, of course you were a good nurse. I think that was one of the reasons Matron was so angry with you, because she had no choice but to send you home after what happened, and she really didn’t want to lose you. But she couldn’t have let you stay, not after everybody found out about you and Ross. Between the pair of you, you broke just about every rule in the book. You do see that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I see it, Erin, I’m not completely stupid. It’s just that I seem to have lost all of my self-confidence and I just can’t pull myself together. I know I should, but I can’t,’ she finished lamely.

It was beginning to occur to Erin that poor Keely might be suffering from some sort of nurses’ version of delayed shell shock. Or was it delayed? Had she in fact been having problems at Brockenhurst but everybody had been too busy to notice?

‘Have you talked to James about this?’ she asked. ‘Or Joseph? I’m sure they’d understand.’

‘No, I didn’t want to bother James. He had to go into hospital recently, did you know? For a rest. And, well, I felt too silly to talk to Joseph about it. Here he is, a leg missing and he’s doing so well — riding and back at work and building your house and all that — and here’s me not even able to get up in the mornings or speak to anyone with a civil tongue when everyone’s been so kind to me. Of course, I’ve only told Mam the real reason I came
home. I’m sure Da thinks I was sent back to protect my virtue or something old-fashioned like that.’ She sighed heavily. ‘God, what am I going to do? I can’t go on like this. I felt so alive over there, but here I feel like I might as well be dead.’

‘
No
,’ Erin snapped back immediately. ‘Don’t ever say that,
ever
. What would that achieve? That really
would
be the cowardly way out. Look at you, you’re young, beautiful, intelligent, you’ve your whole life in front of you, which is more than can be said for Ian and all of those thousands and thousands of other men who have died.’ She finally lost her temper and whacked her hand onto the bedspread angrily. ‘How dare you say that, Keely, after everything we’ve seen and done? How
dare
you?’

Keely looked at her in alarm, shocked by the vehemence in her voice.

‘Well?’ Erin demanded. ‘
Have
you any right to say something like that, after so many people have lost their lives without even having the choice?’

‘No,’ Keely admitted grudgingly.

‘No, you haven’t. Look, I know nursing all those poor soldiers was horrible and hard and utterly depressing, but we all did it and so did you. And you were an excellent nurse, Keely. Don’t discount all of that now that you’re home again. Forget about Ross McManus, or if you can’t forget about him, at least try to think of him as someone who was probably just as lonely and as frightened as you were. He probably needed you as much as you thought you needed him, but he was just more realistic about it. God, what am I doing defending him?’ Erin shook her head in bemused wonder. ‘But be
proud
of what you did over there, not ashamed and depressed. It’s time to get on with life again, for me and for you. I’m going to start by marrying the man I love more than anything else in the world. What are you going to do?’

Keely opened her mouth, shut it again briefly, then said, ‘If it’s
all right with you, I’d like to start by being your bridesmaid.’